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The Mission of the Institute is to provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write in order to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to national defense.

Museum Report

The World's Oldest Battleship

For more than 50 years, the battleship was regarded as the capital ship of the world's navies. Hundreds were built between 1880 and the end of World War II, yet only a handful survive as museum ships. The Royal Navy, which commissioned more than 100 battleships, has astonishingly not preserved a single one. Even HMS Dreadnought , whose design was so revolutionary that her name became synonymous with the type, could not escape the scrap yard. The United States has done somewhat better in this regard, having preserved seven World War II battleships and the USS Texas , the lone extant battleship to have seen combat in both World Wars. Only one other battleship—the sole pre-Dreadnought—is left in the world, the oldest and arguably the most significant for naval history: the Mikasa , located in Yokosuka, Japan.

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